Blood in the Water by Tash McAdam Page A

a breach-yet-to-be, allowing
warriors and warlocks time to prepare. I wouldn’t have described
myself as particularly intuitive, although I’ve always had a knack
for talking my way out of trouble. I don’t think that was enough to
make them ‘pick’ me.
    Supposedly, the Warp magic is
inside every single human on the planet. Anyone can be woken at any
minute, a ‘holy’ duty thrust upon them with no warning. Without any
convenient sign or dramatic music signaling that it’s happened.
Just some people who might be crazy trying to awkwardly explain that you’re
needed to save the world.
    The way the professors talk about
it, you’d think the Warp was God, or at least a sentient,
all-powerful sort of thing. Choosing champions from the populace to
protect the walls between realities. But from what I’ve seen, it
chooses rather strangely. We certainly don’t look very heroic. Most
of us are in our teens, but there are stories about old people and
even children being given power for short periods of time, in great
emergencies. Those people don’t get to keep their power for long;
as soon as the emergency is over, they forget about it entirely.
And even people who are ‘chosen’ usually fade out and lose their
gifts by their late twenties. I guess middle-aged people aren’t
that handy in the war against chaos. So I’m probably in it for the
long haul; I might be thirty by the time I stop acting like a magical Geiger
counter and magnet. I’ll be stuck with this lot for the next
fifteen years. Until then, our job is to prevent the different
dimensions from bleeding into one another until everything is dark
and destroyed.
    No problem.
    A student who hums with barely contained
energy sighs loudly enough to get my attention, presumably at the
professor’s words, and slumps back into her padded seat at the
woman’s reminder that she is never going to compete in the
Olympics. The lecturer raises a pointed eyebrow and looks sternly
over her half-moon glasses for a long moment before
continuing.
    “Some of you were chosen for your intellect
and strength of mind, and have therefore been touched with esoteric
magics. You will be trained as warlocks, taught to use spells to
help your companions against the encroaching darkness. You will
develop your skills until we find the elements in which you excel,
and then you will be put to work researching as well as taking the
fight to the field itself. Leave the right path—the choice to
protect your species—and you will be rewarded by slipping into
idiocy, and become gibbering, drooling wrecks. The magics that mark
you are unassailable. They give you the ability to change the
world, but should you falter, they will strip you of everything
that made you special. You will march at your companions’ sides
until you are unable to do so. Don’t be so arrogant as to believe
that for you, there may be a different route. Your spells and
potions are nothing compared to the raw power of the
Warp.”
    The warlocks in the room, three female and two
male, are identifiable by the thick archaic volumes—carried
everywhere at all times—balanced on the corners of the tiny desks
they’re squashed behind. They all look exceptionally
studious.
    Isn’t a warlock a bloke? I guess the Protectorate is pro gender-neutral
terms, I observe with an inner
snigger. Like Americans saying ‘server’
instead of ‘waitress’ and ‘waiter,’ now. Funny.
    I perk up as the professor moves on to the
last kind of student at the Protectorate. Weavers. Me.
    “And finally, the weavers, with the ability to
shut the doors between our world and others. Your responsibility is
great; without you the veils between dimensions would tear open
irreparably, and allow Earth to be overrun. Not even the warriors
and warlocks could stand against the hells that would be unleashed,
should you fail in your duty. While some dimensions pose no threat
to us, others try to open doorways big enough for an invasion.
Without you,